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BOSTON — The e-mail message from a Massachusetts supporter to one of the leaders of the Tea Party movement arrived in early December. The state was holding a special election to fill the seat held by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, it said, and conditions were ripe for a conservative ambush: an Election Day in the dead of winter with the turnout certain to be low.

A demonstration against government spending and “socialized health care” planned for Sept. 12 in Washington could become “the largest gathering of fiscal conservatives ever,” organizers said on Thursday. Among the sponsors of the march is FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group that was instrumental in fueling opposition to a health care overhaul at town hall-style meetings this summer. The National Taxpayers Union and the Tea Party Patriots are also major sponsors. The groups began building momentum earlier this year with opposition to President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan and bank bailouts. Over the summer, their opposition to big government spending found an outlet at the health-care town halls. Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, said that the groups had started planning the protest and obtaining permits last February, realizing that Congress would be returning to Washington this month and taking up major legislation, including health care. “Health care has always been one of our primary focuses, and we guessed right about the timing,” he said in an interview. “It is emblematic of this broader theme about spending money we don’t have and the government getting involved in things it has had no success on.” Asked if Medicare was not a success, Mr. Kibbe said it was underfunded, broken and financially unsustainable. Organizers said in a conference call that they expected tens of thousands of people at the march but could not predict a number because many demonstrators planned to come on their own. They also said that the crowds were not being “ginned up.” “All we’ve done is create the space for these guys to show up,” Mr. Kibbe said. “If they aren’t angry enough to pay their own way, we couldn’t gin it up.” Andrew Moylan of National Taxpayers Union said that his group had been around for 40 years and only now were thousands of new people responding to the movement. “The story of this is that it’s not just conservatives anymore, who were always concerned about this,” he said. “It’s the story of the disaffected moderates who have had it up to here with the actions in Washington.” Adam Brandon, a spokesman for FreedomWorks, predicted this would be the largest gathering ever of fiscal conservatives, distinct from the social conservatives who have organized major events around issues like abortion and gun rights. Fiscal conservatives, he said, had never really gathered in groups of more than a couple of thousand. “This is the beginning of a big tent on our side,” he said.

Rick Santelli, the CNBC reporter whose on-air suggestion of a “Chicago Tea Party” to protest President Obama’s housing plan sparked an Internet sensation and a smattering of actual protests across the country, found himself on the defensive Monday.Mr. Santelli published a long blog post on CNBC’s Web site Monday evening denying any affiliation with the “tea party movements that have popped up” since his comments were broadcast. A number of blogs had questioned whether Mr. Santelli had coordinated his on-camera commentary with right-wing groups.

Ideologues in the Bush administration would like to dismantle Section 8, the most successful public-and-private housing partnership in the history of the United States. That's the only way to explain the destructive policies emanating from the Housing and Urban Development Department, which has been hammering at Section 8 all year. The conflicting signals and general aura of hostility have convinced housing authorities around the country that they need to defend themselves by avoiding new commitments and cutting back on their old ones.

WASHINGTON, July 21 - Four years after black voters all but ignored George W. Bush at the ballot box, the Republican Party is still struggling to make itself more attractive to them and other minorities.

WASHINGTON, June 30 — In his search for access to the ballot, Ralph Nader can sometimes seem as if he has never met a third party he did not like.
After all, Mr. Nader, the left-leaning consumer advocate, and Patrick J. Buchanan, the right-leaning commentator, hardly seem like political soul mates. But four years after Mr. Buchanan won the endorsement of the Reform Party, Mr. Nader has succeeded him as the party's standard-bearer.

"Out of Many," the work of four respected historians, is one of the biggest sellers among American history college textbooks in the United States, but it is not likely to be available to Texas high school students taking advanced placement history. Conservative groups in Texas objected to two paragraphs in the nearly 1,000-page text that explained that prostitution was rampant in cattle towns during the late 19th century, before the West was fully settled.

As the Senate moved toward a risky vote on repealing the estate tax; William H. Gates Jr. sat a continent away on Wednesday, trying to work his will on the proceedings.
One of a group of wealthy Americans who have campaigned to keep the inheritance tax, Mr. Gates, father of the Microsoft mogul, called pivotal senators. From Seattle, he laid out his case for withstanding the Republican-led election year effort to eliminate the tax or put Democrats on record as opposing repeal.

The majority leader Tom Daschle abruptly opened Senate debate today on a Republican plan to repeal the estate tax permanently, complicating lobbying efforts by those on both sides of the issue.
With just a few hours notice, the Democratic leadership initiated debate on a proposal to rescind the tax as of 2010. Under tax cuts adopted last year, the value of assets exempted from the tax would be gradually increased until 2010, and then the tax would be eliminated for one year before it returned to 2001 levels.